4 ms·

I've only visited San Francisco, but I think one thing to consider is actually that it's a really small city with just too much going for its size. It's only 4

I've only visited San Francisco, but I think one thing to consider is actually that it's a really small city with just too much going for its size. It's only 46 square mile and has over 800k inhabitants. It's the second densest city after New York. The surrounding Bay area adds 6.7 million more people, a large amount of who regularly go into the city for entertainment or work. I think it's an estimated 160k additional people that come in to the city per day from the outer areas. And there is an average of 131k tourist in the city each day as well. So you have almost 1.1 million people in a 46 square mile area. The city is fully built as well, there's no lots left, everything has a building on it with no room to grow, nowhere to expand out. You could only expand up, but that would require destroying and rebuilding. The landscape is also all hills and valleys, huge slopes, it's not the easiest to work around. The mayor is born and raised and still lives in San Francisco. All in all, I just think running a city like that, of that size and yet so populous, that also has so much wealth at the top, a relatively strong middle, but also large lows, it's got a lot of all classes of things, it's just a harder problem because of the sheer scale and density of it all. Seattle is twice the size at 84 square mile, and has a smaller population at 740k. The city has developed more recently as well, and a lot of the newer development are big tall skyscraper, there's still a little bit of building too small in some places, but it still hasn't reached anywhere the sheer density of San Francisco.

ericmay 4y ago
Be careful as the city square mileage can be misleading. The other problem facing cities such as San Francisco is that despite its density it does a piss poor job at public transit and is still focused on car-first infrastructure. To your point, the surrounding area is ~7 million. It’s physically impossible for all of them or even most of them to drive everywhere without gigantic infrastructure problems. It will simply not work. Ever. It is physically impossible.
- didibus 4y ago
  > Be careful as the city square mileage can be misleading As in exaggerating it's livable land size? Or the other way around?
  - ericmay 4y ago
    For example, if you look at lists of "largest cities in the US" [1] you'll find Columbus in the top 15 or so. But if you actually visit, it's no larger than Indianapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, or other similarly sized metro areas. This occurs because the city occupies ~225 square miles [1] and so when you look at density it turns out Columbus isn't much of a big city at all. If you look at this link from Wikipedia, Columbus is even larger than San Francisco or Boston! Wow so big. But the relevant metric is density, not square milage. I could have been more clear here but I just wanted other readers to note that you can't just look at square milage or even population, you have to look at those together to get density to help derive insight. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
    - didibus 4y ago
      Fair enough, that was my point though, San Francisco is really dense, and has no room to expand. So you're looking at a city too big for its own good in some ways, as in, everything is a lot harder to manage when not only is it one of the largest in population, but also smallest in area resulting in really dense population and also no available land for growth.
rootusrootus 4y ago
> The city is fully built as well, there's no lots left While that may be true, a huge fraction of the city is single family homes. Increasing housing capacity would be trivial were the political will to exist.
- didibus 4y ago
  Trivial sounds inappropriate. It doesn't get any more complicated then that scenario in this case. You'd have to re-appropriate people's family homes, or buy it from them. You have to destroy, possibly decontaminate, and then rebuild, there's the neighborhood to think about as well, with neighbors having to deal with the construction and the newly obstructed view, etc. Does the infrastructure support feeding water, gaz, electricity, internet as needed for a large apartment complex, and so on. It is feasible, but can you think of a more complicated situation then this one? As it comes to cities and paths to increase housing, San Francisco seems to be one of the hardest one to accomplish.

ericmay 4y ago

Be careful as the city square mileage can be misleading. The other problem facing cities such as San Francisco is that despite its density it does a piss poor job at public transit and is still focused on car-first infrastructure. To your point, the surrounding area is ~7 million. It’s physically impossible for all of them or even most of them to drive everywhere without gigantic infrastructure problems. It will simply not work. Ever. It is physically impossible.

didibus 4y ago
> Be careful as the city square mileage can be misleading As in exaggerating it's livable land size? Or the other way around?
- ericmay 4y ago
  For example, if you look at lists of "largest cities in the US" [1] you'll find Columbus in the top 15 or so. But if you actually visit, it's no larger than Indianapolis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, or other similarly sized metro areas. This occurs because the city occupies ~225 square miles [1] and so when you look at density it turns out Columbus isn't much of a big city at all. If you look at this link from Wikipedia, Columbus is even larger than San Francisco or Boston! Wow so big. But the relevant metric is density, not square milage. I could have been more clear here but I just wanted other readers to note that you can't just look at square milage or even population, you have to look at those together to get density to help derive insight. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
  - didibus 4y ago
    Fair enough, that was my point though, San Francisco is really dense, and has no room to expand. So you're looking at a city too big for its own good in some ways, as in, everything is a lot harder to manage when not only is it one of the largest in population, but also smallest in area resulting in really dense population and also no available land for growth.

rootusrootus 4y ago

> The city is fully built as well, there's no lots left While that may be true, a huge fraction of the city is single family homes. Increasing housing capacity would be trivial were the political will to exist.

didibus 4y ago
Trivial sounds inappropriate. It doesn't get any more complicated then that scenario in this case. You'd have to re-appropriate people's family homes, or buy it from them. You have to destroy, possibly decontaminate, and then rebuild, there's the neighborhood to think about as well, with neighbors having to deal with the construction and the newly obstructed view, etc. Does the infrastructure support feeding water, gaz, electricity, internet as needed for a large apartment complex, and so on. It is feasible, but can you think of a more complicated situation then this one? As it comes to cities and paths to increase housing, San Francisco seems to be one of the hardest one to accomplish.